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It will become more central to society than the Internet as we know it today.

We’ve already written about why 2014 is really, finally the year that the “Internet of things”—that effort to remotely control every object on earth—becomes visible in our everyday lives.

But most of us don’t recognize just how far the internet of things will go, from souped-up gadgets that track our every move to a world that predicts our actions and emotions. In this way, the Internet of things will become more central to society than the Internet as we know it today. The Web will survive, just as email survived the arrival of the Web. But its role will be reduced to that of a language for displaying content on screens, which are likely to be more ubiquitous but less necessary.